SearchEngineland posted an article recommending against using NoFollow tags to help improve page ranks for important pages.  They cited that this was a form of spam.  And I say Bah!  Here’s why.

What is nofollow for anyway?

When Google sees the attribute (rel=”nofollow”) on hyperlinks, those links won’t get any credit when we rank websites in our search results. This isn’t a negative vote for the site where the comment was posted; it’s just a way to make sure that spammers get no benefit from abusing public areas like blog comments, trackbacks, and referrer lists.

How can you increase your PageRank?
Higher PageRank can be achieved by increasing the number of links going to that page. Each link has the ability to pass PageRank to other pages, often called passing link juice. The nofollow tag allows you to increase link juice to more important pages by adding the tag to pages you don’t need to pass rank to.

They Say – I Say

They said:
…if you want a site to have an effective information architecture for both end users and search engine spiders, then create a good information architecture.

I say:
Good advice for your average website.  Now, we all know that if you want to beat the competition, you have to go above and beyond your competition and stay abreast on the latest trends and technology.  Now, if they’re doing NoFollows, you must do nofollows just to stay on par with them.  If they aren’t, you must do it to set the standard.

They say:
I predict that many SEO professionals will massively abuse the nofollow attribute and that it will no longer be valued.

I say:
I predict that if your site contains valuable content, search engines will value your site.  And, if there are pages that don’t provide as valuable of content as others, you are doing search engines a favor by sculpting your PageRank.